ItsDevelopmental - content + technology + people

Time to get your CV online

Hmmm, still thinking about this. But here is a great post on Mashable about how to create a great social media CV. I think many people - and especially journalists - shy away from promoting themselves, their skills and experience online. And I guess these are the people who are  not that active online and who might not want to promote themselves. Or do they have something to hide?

But, with the media industry changing where is such an approach going to get you? Not far.

What I like about the steps listed on Mashable is that they are all about sharing, using networks and having a prescence and having something to say. In short, PR and marketing - not journalism!

It is time to be found and shared. And yes, I need to do what i say here.

Are managers up to the current change management challenge?

I read the Guardian newspaper on Mondays as I have a fairly long train ride to work. Yesterday, I found it quite ironic to read a big story on job cuts in the UK regional press followed a few pages later by a Jeff Jarvis column talking about the New York Times going hyperlocal - setting up a blog to cover a certain geographic area (which is already happening in parts of the UK).

Aside from this juxtaposition of old publishing world versus new publishing world, I was struck by the following comments on job cuts made by a reporter.

'We're restructuring the business, these are the products we want to produce, this is how many people we need to produce them, this is our strategy for growing the audience, this is the standard we expect, this is what our newspaper stands for,' we could accept that the cuts had a purpose," says one reporter on a southern daily paper.

"But we seem to have no strategy. They can't agree about social media. They have no idea who their audience should be or how to reach them. They ghettoise web teams. Advertising staff are chasing their tails trying to persuade companies who got their web ads for free last year that this year they're worth paying for - while at the same time having to heavily discount paper ads because of the recession. There's no joined-up thinking about how to make the web pay."

There are two points that stand out here:

1 Old world publishers neeed to work out their new business models and quickly. Where's the strategy?

2 For any media company to change and change quickly it needs to be very clear with its people where it is going, what that looks like and what this means for individuals in terms of skills, job cuts etc. And if the strategy is in a state of flux organisations need to be honest about this.

The second point has huge implications for the leadership and management capabilty within changing media organisations. The question is: are senior managers within media organisations up to the job? Do they have a strategy? Are they communicating it effectively? Are they taking people with them?

When you want something changed quickly . . .

. . . you have to innovate and probably try a different approach. That seemed to me to be the lesson from this story on the development of an electric supercar.

At relatively low cost and short timescales a team of car experts got to work on devloping the car. Sourcing of parts included the shell of a Lotus Exige from eBay.

This is the quote that says it all.

"If this were Ford it would have taken years and millions of pounds to develop. Big car companies are very conventional. We can keep it small and can make decisions quickly. They get bogged down in management systems and find it hard to be innovative," says Ian Doble, the project leader.

Training: the medium can be an important part of the message

Our informal, weekly training sessions at RBI started yesterday. They are called Elevenses as they will be held at 11am every Thursday. Adam curated the first one on Twitter and it was a great success. More than 50 people sharing experiences, listening and learning.

Adam highlights the effectiveness of an informal, conversational setting to talk about a conversational medium. The medium was in some senses the message here.

Other factors that made the session a success were:

• The topic - Twitter pulls a crowd

• The format - 45 mins of discussion and sharing - various people from around the business contributed

• The marketing - pushed on the intranet and to business managers by email

• The look and feel - it did not feel like a corporate/formal training session.

The final point is important and does come back to the medium being the message. Lectures are no good when talking about technologies that are all about networks and conversations.

Outcome: some of my team attended the session and as a result I have drawn up a plan for getting some more profiles started. Success.

 

 

Trainers beware: Twitter lets delegates give real-time feedback

A colleague of mine told me of a course he was on recently where a few delegates were tweeting as they took the course - they were at PCs so could do so easily.

Some of the comments weren't all that positive BUT they were picked up by another colleague who had a hand in designing the course. He then fed back some of the Twitter comments back to the trainer.

The feedback was instantaneous and was acted on, so a positive outcome and a demonstration of how Twitter enabled the real-time development of some training.

I think it is important to note that this was a software training course so a) there was easy access to Twitter and b) there were not issues around deleagte confidentiality. 

That said, Twitter enables feedback, sharing of ideas and transparency around training which is very powerful in evolving train ing content.

My Twitter mosaic

Not that much Red Nose day action, then . . .

Get your twitter mosaic here.

Presentation: a content strategy for your content

Great presentation here from Kristina Halvorson from Brain Traffic on the importance of content online and how to manage it. Would have liked to have been at the presentation.

[Posted on Junta 42]

Content Strategy: The Care and Feeding of Your Biggest Brand Asset

View more presentations from Kristina Halvorson.

Learning from work experience students

I have decided to start asking our work experience students a few questions about how they use the web. This is what I found out from our current student (aged 15 and female):

• Has a mobile and laptop

• Spends 5 hours an evening online

• Primarily uses Facebook and MSN messenger to talk to friends

• Uses school web site to access files, file homework etc

• Uses shopping sites such as Asos.com

• Doesn't use Twitter, read blogs and doesn't use email much.

How people respond to a downturn

Interesting piece in The Guardian on how we respond to a downturn.

Couple of points stood out for me:

1 We innovate in a downturn. We have to because old ways of working just don't work anymore. That means lots of opportunities. Danger is that organisations are too slow in changing and get caught out. What happens if you are traditional organisation with no culture of innovation?

2 We do things differently. It has been great to see employers try different approaches to saving money from their mostly costly asset - their people. Instead of cutting people employers are putting a freeze on recruitment, trying four day weeks, looking at new working patterns, flexible working, cutting bonuses, freezing pay rises.

Social media tools for HR and training

UPDATE: A cautionary tale of social media in the workplace. 

Following on from last week's presentation at Wolverhampton's Learning Lab, I have decided to pull together all the links and useful info on HR and web 2.0. These will links will appear on the slides from our presentation which will be posted on the Learning Lab site shortly. Thanks to Michael at XpertHR for some of these links.

Research

Web 2.0 and human resources - a June 2008 report by the CIPD
The Facebook Fear Factor – New CIPD report urges HR to view Web 2.0 advances as an opportunity rather than a threat. Download CIPD March 09 report on web 2 for HR  [2.3MB PDF].

More details on how Web 2.0 can help drive organisational performance will be discussed in an interactive session at the CIPD’s annual HRD conference on Wednesday 22nd of April at ExCel, London

Six Ways to make Web 2 work from Mckinsey.
 

Practitioner tips

52 ideas on using social media within HR by Michael Specht - check out the comments too. And here is a presentation by Michael on Web 2.0.

Social media for HR execs - presenetation by Carmen Hudson, senior manager, Talent Acquisition, Yahoo.

Worth doing searches on Slideshare for Twitter and social media - there are lots of great presentationers by HR practitioners. And don't forget to share your presentations too.

Couple of great posts from the Fistful of Talent Blog. Again, check out the comments too.
5 Must-Use Social Media Tools For HR & Recruiting Professionals In 2009...
5 (More) Must-Use Social Media Tools For HR & Recruiting Professionals In 2009

And help get a sense of social media uptake in HR by taking the Corporate social media assessment from Talent Tecnology blog.

Follow the conversations

Get an RSS reader and see who is saying what. Start by looking up the top 50 HR blogs.

Hit the forums at HR Space, Training Zone and HR Zone.

Look up training and HR people on Twitter through Twello. HR Zone has compiled a list of UK HR professionals on Twitter. 
 

Employer guidelines

• IBM social media guidelines.

• Edelman online behaviour policy.